Boris Johnson Gets Caught on EU Zipwire

Earlier this year, Mayor of London Boris Johnson became an international figure of fun when he was filmed stranded on a zipwire at an event to publicize the London Games. But now he has pulled off the politically equivalent feat as his public struggle to set out a credible position on U.K. membership of the European Union threatens to leave him intellectually dangling in mid-air.

In a speech Tuesday, Mr. Johnson said he was in favor of a referendum on the U.K.’s EU membership. That came a week after he said that he wasn’t in favor, which came days after he had said he was. Even more surprising, he now says he would vote in favor of British membership, but only if it was first stripped down to those bits of the EU single market of which Mr. Johnson approves, excluding those bits such as the common fisheries policy and EU employment rules of which he doesn’t. Mr. Johnson seems to believe such a deal is achievable, perhaps by threatening to frustrate the euro zone’s efforts to create a fiscal and banking union, which he also happens to oppose.

If Mr. Johnson’s position lacks coherence it’s because he has a particular problem with Europe. As a young Brussels-based journalist, he did more than anyone to turn U.K. opinion against the EU with a stream of dispatches lampooning European efforts to harmonize the rules of its single market. Yet now he is mayor of a city that is by far the biggest beneficiary of the single market and indeed the euro.

The City of London owes its modern renaissance to its position as Europe’s offshore financial centre. As mayor, Mr. Johnson has positioned himself as the defender of the U.K. financial services industry. Yet City leaders are clear that London can have no serious future as a financial centre outside the EU. Indeed, uncertainty over the U.K.’s future membership may already be deterring overseas investment in London, according to people advising foreign investors.

Mr. Johnson’s latest U-turn leaves him in a similar position to the U.K. prime minister, although David Cameron is expected to clarify his own shifting position in a hotly-anticipated speech that may or may not be delivered before the end of the year. Like Mr. Johnson, Mr. Cameron is also struggling to reconcile his duty to protect the national interest, which clearly lies in continued EU membership, with a career built on playing to his Conservative Party’s euroskeptic gallery.

But Mr. Johnson’s buffoonish public image and lack of serious responsibility allows him to get away with such incoherence; Mr. Cameron knows he must come up with something far more robust, not least to avoid fuelling expectations he cannot possibly meet over a renegotiation of U.K. membership and thereby boxing himself into the rejectionist camp. No wonder Mr. Cameron is struggling to write his speech. Whatever he says, he knows he risks being left dangling from the political zipwire too.

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